Maybe it’s the caffeine in my crack-of-dawn coffee or the pseudoephedrine in my decongestants (trying to stave off that annual bout with sinus problems), but I had yet another of those surprise flashes of purest joy this morning. As I usually do, I encountered it in a simple, ordinary moment, this time as I was buckling my four-old-son into his car seat. With a grin, he said something that sent his nine-year-old sister and I into a fit of giggles. And I felt those sudden, warm, overflowing waters of joy.As I finished buckling the straps, I was grateful to notice the moment. Moments like these—moments of joy or encountering wonder in the wind or armadillos—call me back to what is real and what matters. Back to paying attention. Back to life as process rather than agenda. In the end, moments like these call me back to God.
Too often, I am distracted. My thoughts are running through to-do lists or thinking about an article I’m writing or some other of seeming endless things. While a good portion of the things I think about need attention, I’m one of those folks who’s prone to letting my agendas overtake my vision. And I usually don’t notice until a moment like this comes along—or, less pleasantly, I find myself acting selfishly and treating my kids (and others) as objects in the way of or pieces that must be juggled as I accomplish my agenda.
It is moments like these when I realize I’ve been distracted from what this life in the Kingdom is all about—walking with Jesus, being in the room, living in the present, looking up from my feet to the Kingdom and what God is doing. And all that, again, takes me back to God and the wide open spaces of his Love, Life and Grace in which I live and breathe.
So, be it the coffee or decongestants or not, today I’m walking with a little more of a spring in my step and a somewhat silly grin on my face. Life in the Kingdom is good. Just like it’s Creator.
(Image: generated by RedKid.net)